30 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
30 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
SOURCE:Associated Press – Business
|
||
The federal government on Saturday dismissed charges against a Utah plastic surgeon accused of throwing away COVID-19 vaccines, giving children saline shots instead of the vaccine and selling faked vaccination cards.
|
||
|
||
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on the social media platform X that charges against Dr. Michael Kirk Moore, of Midvale, Utah, were dismissed at her direction.
|
||
|
||
Moore and other defendants faced up to 35 years in prison after being charged with conspiracy to defraud the government; conspiracy to convert, sell, convey and dispose of government property; and aiding and abetting in those efforts. The charges were brought when Joe Biden was president.
|
||
|
||
“Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so,” Bondi wrote. “He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.”
|
||
|
||
Felice John Viti, acting U.S. attorney for Utah, filed the motion Saturday, saying “such dismissal is in the interests of justice.”
|
||
|
||
The trial began Monday in Salt Lake City with jury selection. It was expected to last 15 days.
|
||
|
||
Messages sent to the U.S. Department of Justice, Viti’s office in Salt Lake City and to Moore were not immediately returned Saturday to The Associated Press.
|
||
|
||
A federal grand jury on Jan. 11, 2023, returned an indictment against Moore, his Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah Inc., others associated with the clinic and a neighbor of Moore’s. The indictment alleged more than $28,000 of government-provided COVID-19 vaccine doses were destroyed.
|
||
|
||
They were also accused of providing fraudulently completed vaccination record cards for over 1,900 doses of the vaccine in exchange for either a cash or a donation to a specified charitable organization.
|
||
|
||
The government also alleged some children were given saline shots, at their parents’ request, so the minors believed they were getting the vaccine.
|
||
|
||
Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., a leading anti-vaccine activist before becoming the nation’s top health official, posted his support for Moore in April, saying on X that Moore “deserves a medal for his courage and his commitment to healing!”
|
||
|
||
During his confirmation hearings in January, Kennedy repeatedly refused to acknowledge scientific consensus that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism and that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives.
|
||
|
||
In a follow-up X post on Saturday, Bondi said Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene brought the case to her attention.
|
||
|
||
___
|
||
|
||
Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska. |